Slacktivism?

This is a spin off post to the one I did on “voluntourism” as I continue the process of reflecting on what doing  “good” in this world means.

“In contrast to those who suggest that we act as soon as the whistle blows, I suggest that, even before the whistle blows we ceaselessly try to know the world in which we live — and act. Even if we must act on imperfect knowledge, we must never act as if knowing is no longer relevant.” (p. 6)  Mahmood Mamdani in Saviors and Survivors:  Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror (2009)

Expanding the definition
The common use of the term “slacktivism” is of fairly recent origin, and the most common definition is ‘action taken via the Internet in support of some social cause but requiring little effort.’  There has been some interesting research on the term and broad coverage in the online press.  One of the major questions asked is can slacktivism lead to activism.

Good question, that.

There is no lack of clarity that it is a pejorative term, unlike the more neutral (for the most part) term ‘voluntourism.’  My definition of slacktivism is a bit broader and includes Internet based action, of course, but also includes behaviors in daily life such as buying a pair of Tom’s shoes and claiming oneself as an activist.

In an interview for a story that appeared in the student magazine The Edge I referred to some of the Elon students participating in the annual Elonthon fundraiser as ‘slacktivists.’  That generalization is clearly not true for everyone involved, and I know that the key organizers do their level best to thoroughly vet the partnering organizations.  That said, there are many who participate in the event that I had in mind when making the comment.  In reaction to The Edge story one of the past organizers contacted me via email.  Here is, in part, what she said, “Majority of students who come to Elonthon for the Greek “points” likely get very little out of it, and while I wish I could make all of them serve others from an authentic, compassionate place, that’s sadly the sleepy way they float through life. What our exec board does try to do is put them in a place that will create an inner shift, while also making at least a small impact.”  No one wants to have a pejorative term applied to them or to any activities or organizations to which they are connected.  The reality is that in the case of some behaviors the label “slacktivist” seems to fit.

Pericleans as “slacktivists?”
Year after year the Periclean Scholars program is fortunate to attract from among the first year class some of the most dedicated and passionate students at Elon.  The women and men who get inducted into this program typically have long histories of service work through their churches, high schools, athletic teams and community civic organizations (Boy and Girl Scouts, for example).  Many (most?) of these new inductees see the Periclean Scholars program as an extension of work they have been doing in many cases for years.

One of the main goals of our program is to have Periclean Scholars -both individually and as a Class-  ceaselessly probe deeper and deeper into the nature of aid and development work in general and partnering in particular, constantly learning how to mindfully differentiate between partnering and patronizing, between “good” and “bad” aid.  In previous posts I have discussed a wide array of ideas and perspectives on this topic, most recently posting on “voluntourism.”

This winter term I taught SOC 370 Being and Becoming a Global Citizen. I developed this course four years ago and it has allowed me not only the luxury of reading and then teaching from some very seminal works in this area. Perhaps even more importantly I get to read the thoughts of the scores of students whom I have had read and respond to this material.  The content we cover in this class is a direct outgrowth of the questions raised by the very existence of the Periclean Scholars program whose overall goal is to put into action the part of the Elon University Mission statement which says, “We integrate learning across the disciplines and put knowledge into practice, thus preparing students to be global citizens 
and informed leaders motivated by concern for the common good.”

The video below was created by Dawson Nicholson and Laura Orr, students in SOC 370 Being and Becoming a Global Citizen this past January term.  Both are members of the Periclean Scholars Class of 2016.  What they produced was in response to the charge to look more critically themselves and at Elon students in general with regard to their activism.  I think the message of this video is one that should be heard by many. It reflects my broader definition of “slacktivism.”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpwPAGm8eQM

Final thoughts
It is the responsibility of everyone connected with our program -Pericleans past and present, Mentors, and Director and Associate Director- to continue the “process of reflecting on what doing  ‘good’ in this world means.” Never are good intentions alone sufficient, and quick, un-researched “feel good” actions are the antithesis of what it means to be a Periclean Scholar.

Finally, those connected with our program need to constantly embrace the responsibility to be a positive influence in this regard to friends, family and others, ever passing on the lessons we have learned as our program has developed and deepened.

Post Script  Look here for some suggestions on how to redirect “slacktivists”

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Addressing relational poverty

Pericleans -alumni and current- have a responsibility to ceaselessly increase their knowledge about global social issues not only specific to their country of focus but as well about those impacting all humanity.

One of the of the issues that cuts across all nations of the world is that of poverty.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with the term “relational poverty” (or ‘RP’ as some are calling it) I strongly encourage you to visit this informational web site.  After exploring this site your Class might consider discussing this concept and looking into the sponsorship possibilities.  You might even want to take the screening test yourself.

Below is a one of the sad stories you will see on this web site.  Be prepared for an emotional journey.

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Voluntourism

An important question:  “Are Elon students ever ‘voluntourists?'”

 [Note:  This is an extension of an earlier post where I suggested we deepen our understanding of what it means to be a Periclean Scholar.]

Some thoughts about voluntourism

First, a definition
The usage of this term has increased exponentially in the last half decade and, for many, it carries negative connotations.  For some voluntourism is one manifestation of the overtly disparaging “slacktivism” meme that has gained a lot of traction as well.  This wikipedia article does a nice job reviewing the history, current status and controversies surrounding “volunteer travel.”

Required reading
Perhaps required reading for all Elon students should be the March 2012 Atlantic article by Teju Cole “The White-Savior Industrial Complex” (with a nod to the dated but more-relevant-now-than-it-was then farewell address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower entitled “The Military-Industial Complex“).

Cole’s essay has become part of the cannon with regard to critiquing the activism and voluntourism efforts of many -mostly white- Americans, and it is cited or nodded to by an increasingly wide away of authors and bloggers.  Cole famously made the point that “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”  His words challenge all of us to examine our privileges:  our Americanness, our whiteness*, our English language facility, and, most prominently, our [relative] wealth.  [*Regarding “whiteness”, one of the most surprising -though, we found out later, not unique- experiences of the African-American male who traveled in 2011 with a student crew to Zambia was that he was referred to, like the rest of us, as

‘mzungu’.]

Do I see myself here?
In their article “#InstagrammingAfrica: The Narcissism of Global Voluntourism” after referencing The Onion article spoofing Facebook photos by young American women traveling to Africa, sociologists Lauran Kascak and Sayantani Dasgupta argue that “Voluntourism is ultimately about the fulfillment of the volunteers themselves, not necessarily what they bring to the communities they visit.”  They break voluntourism photos into three telling categories The Suffering Other, The Self-Directed Samaritan, and The Overseas Selfie.

Ouch. In various ways on past travels around the world I am guilty of taking all three, though not recently.

“As ‘Voluntourism’ Explodes In Popularity, Who’s It Helping Most?” posted on the Carrie Kahn’s “Goats and Soda” blog at NPR offers some soft challenges to the idea of voluntourism.  As is often the case, though, commenter ‘emanresu‘ on the post was even more informative and incisive.  I include the whole comment because it is so well written and expresses many points with which I agree.

“The voluntourism trend has given countless white middle-class western kids the opportunity to get a glimpse of what life is like for most of the rest of the world. After a couple weeks of squat toilets, intermittent electricity, and massively overcrowded public transportation, they fly home to tell their families about how life-changing it was to teach English to brown children and get over their fears of cockroaches. All well and good for those who have the resources to pay for a trip like this, and I sincerely applaud the good intentions– the world needs more people with their eyes open to the plight of others, and a bit of international awareness. But, can we all stop trying to pretend that voluntourism isn’t another form of soft colonialism?

Consider this hypothetical situation: you are planning a two-week trip to Nicaragua to build a school for orphans. You are spending thousands of dollars on airfare, and likely another fee for signing up with the school-building organization. During your stay, you will very likely do shoddy construction work, have “meaningful interactions” with adorable kids in your terrible Spanish, get mild food poisoning, and reinforce the image of Rich White People as Saviors of the Third World. After you leave, the building may or may not be used for its intended purpose. Perhaps more volunteers, or else locals with proper expertise, will have to undo the poor work that you did with such good intentions. In any case, you feel satisfied, the poor people have a school, and now you can all go home and continue your own lives.

But. What about the unemployed carpenters in that village? Why not spend a fraction of the money you used to pay your travel there, and employ them to do a proper job? Or sponsor the whole community to build it together, thus creating a sense of responsibility towards the building and its future? And what about the school itself, what happens when the organization leaves, having done what it set out to do, and there is no money to pay a teacher or buy schoolbooks for the adorable orphans? Maybe the building will be repurposed as a shed for animals, or will slowly fall into disrepair. It might just end up being “that place the the gringos built that can’t be used because they nailed the roof on wrong.”

I don’t wish to discourage anyone from applying their goodwill. I just urge us all to critically examine the implications of our actions, individual and collective, and try to examine the source of the problems that we are so keen so solve instead of addressing the surface. From a position of privilege, can we take a more informed view of the vast socio-economic discrepancies directly caused by our own complicity in a system which values capital over life? Of course the world needs help. And it’s a beautiful thing that there are so many people ready to offer what time and money they have. But the benefits of voluntourism are largely an illusion.

I think the term ‘soft colonialism’ is worth a deeper look, to be sure. Are we, as Ivan Illich argued long ago, nothing more than ‘salespeople for the middle class American way of life’?  This idea deserves more in depth exploration, and Daniel Dennett presents us with the fairly well articulated concept of ‘dangerous memes.’  In short, the argument goes, you can inoculate against disease viruses but ‘viruses of the mind’ are potentially even more damaging, infecting most dramatically the young [African, for example] children who crowd around the mzungus, their minds not yet fully protected because their cultural learning is still in process.  Richard Dawkins, originator of the term “meme” (in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene), elaborates on the idea of ‘viruses of the mind’ in his 2003 book The Devil’s Chaplin.

Doing harm?
Making detailed note of a specific -and perhaps insidious- form of voluntourism, visiting orphanages in the developing world, Rafia Zakaria in his article “The white tourists burden” explains that,  “Volunteerism presents an escape, a rare encounter with an authenticity sorely missed, hardship palpably and physically felt – for a small price.”  He is among many who are asking the question about whether or not voluntourism is doing more harm than good.

Scanning down the list of blog posts -some very on point and other not so much- on this Huffington Post  site is useful and can serve to shed light on the good, the bad and the ugly of voluntourism.  Of particular note is the blog post that went viral by Pippa Biddle entitled “The problem with little white girls (and boys):  why I stopped being a voluntourist” where she chronicles her transformation of perspective on her efforts to ‘help.’

My thoughts on this topic were put into some words of “Advice for new college graduates out to save the world“, though you’ll find nothing terribly new in this piece it may sum up some of what you have read above.

Summary thoughts
We should never proceed blindly as we seek to address our need to show -and act on- our empathy toward others, wherever this may happen.  Though we all need to avoid the “paralysis of analysis” that this self-questioning can generate, we must never act as if knowing the real impact of our actions is not relevant, despite our best intentions.

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Snapshots:  The impact of Periclean Scholars Classes over the years

There are two separate but interconnected impacts of the Periclean Scholars program.  One is the impact it has on current students and the lasting change this makes in these lives on into the future as Elon and Periclean alumni. I have posted about this impact previously and will author more posts on this topic in the next several months.

The other main impact of the program -and the one that is the topic of this post- is the change that it has made in the lives of our many partners around the world. Before I go on it must be emphasized that the impacts between Pericleans and partners have never been -nor were ever intended to be- unidirectional.  Quite the opposite is the case.  Individual Pericleans, Periclean Classes and the program as a whole have gained enormously -intellectually, emotionally, professionally and otherwise- from the people and organizations with which we have partnered.  For that we owe a massive debt of thanks to the long list of people and organizations that have allowed us into their lives.

Separate long posts -and even short books- could (and should!) be written about the impact that every Class has had on the lives of people in our countries of focus, but for the sake of being concise, here are some “snapshots” of this impact, year by year.

Class of 2006:  The four documentaries the ’06’s produced were screened widely domestically and internationally, used by the US Peace Corps in Namibia for training purposes, and purchased for distribution by Thomson Higher Education with their Introduction to Sociology and Introduction to Anthropology texts. The partnerships with the US Embassy in Windhoek, Catholic AIDS Action and Lironga Eparu are still active, and HIV+ AIDS activist Anita Isaacs is currently being supported by the Periclean Foundation as she gets her degree in social work from the University of Namibia.  Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the 10’s of thousands.

Class of 2007: Many of the ’07’s have maintained contact with Hope for Honduran Children and other aid organizations in Honduras.  Class of 2007 alumnae Natasha Christensen was honored as the Alumni Service Award recipient at Elon in 2013 and has been one of the most active members of the Periclean Foundation.  Perhaps their main legacy is carving a path for the Class of 2016 which has “recycled” Honduras as their country of focus. Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the thousands.

Class of 2008: Their partnership with Schools for Chiapas, based in San Diego, California and in Oventic, Chiapas, Mexico is long and productive.  Their documentary Painting Without Permission was duplicated (500 copies) and distributed widely in the United States and currently available through the Schools for Chiapas web site.  The people of Suytic in Chiapas continue to benefit from the efforts of the ’08’s and the relationship between Schools for Chiapas and renowned muralist Gustavo Chavez Pavon was moved forward by the Pericleans has continued to bear the fruit of beautiful and revolutionary murals in Mexico, all in service to the cause of the EZLN, the people of Chiapas, and in solidarity with the indigenous all around that world. Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the 10’s of thousands.

Class of 2009:  Partnering with Habitat for Humanity-Internation in Zambia led to a January 2009 build of two homes in the village of Kawama, near Ndola, but the work of the ’09’s was just beginning during that experience as they met with community members to imagine ways to sustain the partnership.  These efforts led directly to a second build in Kawama in 2011 and a deeper partnership with HfH-I staffer Voster Tembo.  Though his work and in partnership with village leaders, the Zambian Development Support Foundation is now in its third year of making small business loans to primarily female Habitat home owners in Kawama and in a second habitat village near Ndola.  The Class of 2018 will “recycle” Zambia and be able to leverage ties forged by the ’09’s. Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the thousands.

Class of 2010:  Dr. Francis Amedahe visited Elon on a Fulbright in 2006-07 and in the words of Mentor Dr. Heidi Frontani, he believes that the acceptance of the national insurance cards at the facility has made a notable difference in the number of people using the facility (and the nurses have requested more beds because numbers are up), but that has only been since around 2013 or so. I think the big impact is that 10,000 people or so now have access to year-round health care who did not.”  This is in reference to a clinic complex in the village of Kpoeta (including the clinic proper, nurses quarters, a pharmacy and a kindergarden) made possible by the Class of 2010.  This Class has made yearly substantial contact with the people of Kpoeta, sustaining both financial and human resources.  That there is a two way impact of these partnerships is demonstratively evidenced in the lives of many 2010’s who now have careers related to their undergraduate work in Ghana. Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the 10’s of thousands.

Class of 2011:  The documentary produced by the Class of 2011 “Elephant in the Room” was alone a great accomplishment and it directly paved the way for a documentary produced by the Class of 2012 (see next).  The partnerships created by the Class of 2011 to organize the Leaders in Environmental Advocacy Forum (LEAF) are sustained in many ways by ’11 alumni, as are their connections to the middles schools with which they partnered both in Sri Lanka in Burlington, NC.  Mentor Crista Arangala recently completed a 9-month Fulbright experience at the University of Colombo, the host institution for LEAF.  Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the thousands.

Class of 2012:  The documentary Health for All produced by the ’12’s drew the interest of officials from Izmir, Turkey and -very long story short- led to the construction of the Izmir Training Centre on the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) campus.  This modern US$100,000 2,000+ square foot facility is in constant use as CRHP hosts groups from around the world for their training courses.  The third Periclean Fellow (in a now well established Elon program)  is currently working as a full time intern at CRHP supporting the work of the training centre and general CRHP administration.  Dr. Martin Kamela, 2012 Mentor, completed a year-long service experience at CRHP where he established a state of the art science training centre on the campus serving the surrounding community.   The CSR-Nonprofit Summit was also replicated and took place in 2013. Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into 10’s of thousands.

Class of 2013:  The intrepid 2013’s were the first “gringo’s” to set foot in the isolated Chiapan village of Piedra Parada and came back with a more complete story about immigration from Mexico to North Carolina -and back- by residents here in Alamance County.  The partnership they created with local Hispanic
women Hogares Sanos (“Healthy Homes”) was the subject of a Master of Public Health thesis by Courtney Latta (Periclean Scholars Class of 2009) and is now being sustained by the Class of 2016.  A partnership with a local Hispanic activist led to the publication of the story of one family from Piedra Parada, and you can buy Aqui y Alla online.  Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the thousands.

Class of 2014:  The first to have a location in the United States as their focus, the Class of 2014 forged deep and meaningful partnerships with people and organizations in Appalachia.  Through the Periclean Foundation they continue their support of these partnerships but perhaps more meaningfully they worked with Elon’s Kernodle Center for Service learning to insure that every fall break there will be Elon students traveling to and working with the people and partners established by the Class of 2014.  The material contributions they made over their many travels to West Virginia still have an impact, but each 2014 knows that the larger impact is the personal contacts that they made and are currently being sustained.  Number of lives impacted:  impossible to determine but into the thousands.

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